with the chairman asking, Who are we looking for? Who are we trying to reach? And it seems to me that two questions that I would have and would love to have anyone on the panel discuss it. Let me just thank you for your service to the country and acknowledge that first and the sincerity of your efforts. Number one is, in broadcasting, particularly in the Middle East, is the focus what it always is in television, which is largest audience share, just going for maximum audience share, or, alternatively, are we attempting to target, and I thought I got that a bit in your answer. Are we attempting to target not just demographic groups by age, which I understand, by inference, the value of trying to reach young men under the age of 30 who seem to be the epicenter of most of our problems in that region of the world in terms of violent acts? But I would also say, beyond that, is there an effort to reach the educated to dissidents to elites who might be more open to our message, who, you know, might be more able to benefit by being equipped with factual information? Let me just ask that question, and then I have one follow-up question, if I may. Mr. CURTIN. The BBG panel will be able to speak in more detail about programming in the Middle East. I would say that the first thing we try to do is to be heard, whether it is broadcasting or Internet or having our spokespeople out there talking. So we do try to reach a broad audience, but when we are talking about our policy, talking about the United States having a system of values, having a society of values, we are very definitely trying to reach people who can then be part of the conversation and influence others in their own country-call them elite or call them educated elite so that our message is heard, first of all. Being heard is only the very, very first step. I think one of the great accomplishments with Under Secretary Hughes is making sure we are out there talking and engaging and being heard. Once we are heard, we carry the argument to the next step and that is to try to win the argument, recognizing though, it is not going to be a question of here are my points, you must agree. It is going to be a continuing conversation all along. But we try to reach the educated elites, but, as the Englishteaching programs and other programs indicate, we are also trying to reach younger people before their views are fully developed. We are trying to expand those programs and it is new for us. We are trying to expand them very definitely. Mr. PENCE. Thank you. I am encouraged by the latter part of your answer and the specificity of the first part. Obviously, some of this will be more appropriate to the next panel, but I wanted to get a general sense here about-I do not know what the chairman's impetus is in calling the hearing, but my enthusiasm for the hearing has much to do with a couple of recent incidents, one where an Iranian conference denying the Holocaust was reported as straight news. I would call that "fake news." We have some of that in America today. It is usually comedy entertainment. In Iran, it is propaganda. For U.S. assets to have been used to report as straight news a conference that featured deniers of the Holocaust and David Duke is deeply offensive to this taxpayer. The second incident was the airing of an unedited speech by the leader of Hezbollah, spewing violence and advocating hatred against Jews, again, on my nickel. So my second and last question for this panel would be, has the purpose of American diplomacy in the Middle East been clearly imparted to those who implement our public diplomacy efforts from upper-level management to mid-level management to rank-and-file broadcasting employees and journalists and to entry-level employees? Has the purpose been imparted? By whom? And are those who implement public diplomacy efforts clearly aware of our purpose? I know the difference between people that are in management at television stations and networks and those that are actually out putting together and producing the product on the air, and I am very troubled that while those that are in management, our Government understand what the purpose of Alhurra and other American enterprises are in this part of the world. How are we, and are we, in fact, adequately communicating to people making editorial decisions that this is not just an unbiased, objective report, both sides' news organization. It has a specific mission in the advancement of the free world. Mrs. WELCH. Well, I think, Congressman, that, as you know, Alhurra's management has already stated that these editorial lapses occurred in the early tenure of the current vice president for news and were not acceptable. Under Secretary Hughes, as the Secretary's representative on the BBG, one of nine members of the board, is confident that Alhurra has corrected this situation and is moving in the right direction. We will leave it to our colleagues that are coming next to describe the editorial controls that have been put in place, but I think it is clear to her and to us that they have corrected the situation at the time. For the Under Secretary, in terms of whether she has communicated and how she has communicated to our overseas posts and our colleagues, who are really the people on the ground doing the work, she has done several things. One, we had a global PAO conference this year. She brought our public affairs officers from all of our posts around the world to Washington, where Secretary Rice, Tony Snow, Under Secretary Burns, Karen, herself, spoke a lot about what we are trying to do in our programs and emphasizing our priorities and our goals. For us, it has been wonderful to have her articulate the way she wants us to go and engage with foreign cultures, in particular, and I think we all know that that is what we need to be doing to improve the impression of the United States around the world. Mr. FARRELL. Congressman Pence, if I may, I think the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, especially under our mandate to increase mutual understanding, has a very important story to impart to you and members of the committee about the coordination in the larger public diplomacy realm that Secretary Hughes and the leadership of the Department have developed. In terms of reaching wider audiences, younger audiences, we have a consistent message within the Bureau, and program development within the Bureau, to reach younger and deeper. This is now a 4-year effort that begins with English language so that we can not only provide the special tools that allow people to have access to correct information, our information, through global sources, but it also provides them with the ability to participate in our exchanges later on, our high school exchanges, our undergraduate exchanges, and our Fulbright Programs. With 20 years of experience in the exchange field, I am fortunate to be here now to see this kind of coordination and reinvestment across a continuum, beginning when a child is 8 years old through her development as a Fulbright or a Humphrey scholar, and I think this kind of coordination needs to be better appreciated. We need to do a better job about that. In addition to reaching elites, people of influence, we are also reaching out to special communities and countries, like Egypt and Pakistan, at the community college level, among teachers, journalists, and others, to bring in not only people at the margins whom we have not been able to reach before through exchanges but also, as I said, people of influence. Mrs. ROMANOWSKI. Congressman, to add to other program aspects of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, one of the things that we have been able to do in the last few years is to reconnect and focus increased funding for cultural and sports diplomacy, which allows us to be able to reach an audience or audiences in very different ways than we were able to do previously. So this has afforded us an opportunity to shift some of the program focus and also to reach out to much more grassroots and to a younger audience that we had not been able to do before, through, as you said, some means of Hollywood, et cetera, but we can do that with an increase in resources in these areas, and it has been very effective in engaging the younger audiences. Mr. PENCE. Great. Thank you, Chairman. Those are all of the questions I have. Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Pence. Mr. Berman? Mr. BERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the issue of increasing educational and cultural exchanges with Iran, I think that is useful, but, given that we do not have a presence there, how do we select the Iranian participants? Does the Iranian Government play any role in that? Do they end up picking and choosing who participates? Mr. FARRELL. Well, Congressman Berman, Mrs. Romanowski and I would both like to respond to this question because we have different kinds of experiences in different programs. So, if I may, I would like to talk about the academic exchange portion of those programs. We have been fortunate, over the last several years, to have representatives of American NGOs visit Iran following all of the rubrics related to OFAC and proper regulation. For the teachers of Persian, the seven who are currently in the United States, those individuals were interviewed by American NGO leaders and identified with the assistance of representatives of Iranian universities. Then they were invited for visa interviews to Dubai. So this really has been a true people-to-people activity for the Persian language. Mr. BERMAN. What kind of American NGO does Iran- Mr. BERMAN. Can you give me an example of what American NGO that would be? Mr. FARRELL. There are a number of American NGOs who have visited Iran. Mr. BERMAN. They are not permanently located Mr. FARRELL. No, no. Mr. BERMAN. They are not based there. Mr. FARRELL. No. Mr. BERMAN. Okay. Mr. FARRELL. They visited Iran for the specific purpose of discussing with university leaders the potential for developing a program that would assist American universities and students better learn Persian. Mr. BERMAN. I have one other question after that, but go ahead. Mrs. ROMANOWSKI. In the Iranian International Visitor and Leadership program, we have focused on a number of themes that has made it easy for us to reach out and build partnerships with American NGOs that have, over the years, because of the nature of the subject, for example, disaster relief and cultural programming, have contacts, and when we have partnered with such NGOS and institutions such as the Aspen Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the medical community, we have been able to, through their support, been able to identify those who want to participate in the program. To date, we have had close to 63 visitors from Iran, and we have found that that has been probably the most effective way of identifying it, even though we do not have a presence there. Mr. BERMAN. One other question for whoever would be the right person. Twenty years ago, I remember that a cynic used to say, on the student exchanges, the African student who studies in Moscow ends up very pro-Western, and the African student who studies in the United States goes back and sort of leans to the Soviets, but that was a cynic saying that. I am curious, with respect to our American universities in places like Cairo and Beirut, can you make any generalization about their attitudes about the United States from participating in those universities in contrast with students who are going to the country's own institutions in those countries? Mr. FARRELL. I have some firsthand knowledge of some of the institutions in the region, in Lebanon and Egypt, in particular. For instance, when one looks at the American University in Cairo and looks at the program which they developed themselves, and now, I believe, both the Middle East Partnership Initiative and USAID support, which provides scholarships to AUC for young men and women, young boys and girls, who are not members of the elite, who live outside of Cairo, the program enables them to come to AUC to study, to participate for the first time in higher education, for the first time in their families' history probably. I have met with these students. Some of them are brought to the United States during the course of their study. They have extraordinary levels of appreciation and a more balanced view of the wider world. So I think, in specific instances that I can speak of, these institutions, which have a tradition of American liberal education going back decades, more than 100 years in some cases, and I think the same is true at a successor institution like Bogazici College in Istanbul, those institutions are providing a unique opportunity to young people, and I see a difference in the graduates. Mr. BERMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. FORTENBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Clearly, this is a transformational time in the world, and it is primarily due to the rapid advance of communications technologies, and these pervasive technologies can be used for very great good or very great harm, and, as you all know, politics and policy tend to be downstream from culture. So, to the degree that these communication technologies are enhancing, challenging, changing—I will leave the judgment open because we do not know exactly where it is going to go, but changing culture. Your work is absolutely essential and critical. I have listened as best I can. I have been a bit distracted, but, obviously, you have a patchwork of processes and policies and programs that are getting to the heart of something, and I think I would ask you that question: What is that something? What is the message? Now, one of my first duties as a fairly new Member of Congress, one of the first official undertakings that I chose to do, was to head straight to the Middle East. It had been a number of years since I had been there, but I prioritized this. When I got into the hotel room, I turned on the television, again, related to my earlier point, to see exactly what communications technologies were up to, since they were not so pervasive when I was there previously. The first channel that came on was a woman singing-I presume it was a traditional form of Arab lamentation. I changed the channel. The next channel was Bugs Bunny in English, and then, of course, there was CNN and the French news channel and British news channel, as well as the Germans. So, again, these communications technologies are pervasive, and they have swooped down very rapidly on the entire world. But back to the central point, and, again, your work is absolutely critical because it has such power, but, clearly, what is the guiding paradigm, the philosophical intent, the framework that pieces together all of these components into what hopefully is one garment, seamless garment, quilt, that makes sense in terms of I do not want to say "reposition" but in terms of telling the best of our story so that we can enhance good relations with people and use these mediums for great good? Mr. CURTIN. I think the essence of our approach across the board is engagement. There are so many, as you are saying, so many vehicles out there. Five years ago, if you would go into that hotel room you would get CNN. Now you get Aljazeera and an incredible number of sources. Our objective is to do whatever we can through whatever medium, and again I would say one of the most effective, if not the most effective, is our exchange programs. Our exchange programs convey to other people the basic values that drive the United States because we believe that those values are also in their inter |